Conflicting

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The prohibitions we build against our intimate fulfillment come in different forms and originate in all kinds of unresolved issues. Without realizing it, we fall into self-created traps from which it’s difficult to escape. We may unconsciously make choices, one after the other, that create a dissonance between who we are and how we live, what we want and what we can offer, what we desire and what we ask for so that we protect ourselves from showing and getting in touch with our raw selves. In one way or another, we stubbornly perpetuate situations that keep us safe.

On a path toward change, we embark on new roads, take turns, sometimes traverse dark tunnels and emerge in uncharted territories. These are all tracks that contribute to shaping who we become. One change paves the way for another, so a small step can overturn a whole catalog of undesired habits. We learn by doing. We all deserve to find what it is that, more than anything else, matters to us and makes us vibrate with life. We need to be authentic.

Already at the end of the nineteenth century, William James had recognized that change could be initiated by a shift in mental habits. He wrote: “Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”

In neuroscience, this translates into small adjustments in the way neurons fire that, repetition after repetition, have the power to make us come out of a habitual rut of behavior and settle on a better track, shifting, for instance, automated responses of fear to attitudes of positivity, or inaction into purpose.

Habits respond to cues that trigger them. Over time, habits ossify and become so encrusted in behavioral riffs because, in one way or another, they reward us. In order to break habits, we need to recognize those cues and avoid them or force ourselves to respond to them differently, to experiment with new rewards.

~ Frazzetto, Giovanni. Together, Closer

Lead with your body

Your mind likes to be in charge and tell your body what to do. The trouble is, your mind has a nasty habit of filling up with thoughts that will get your body into trouble. Or tempt it into doing nothing at all.

Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.

— Tim Fargo

So, a smarter strategy is to lead with your body. Act first, and it will bring your mind along for the ride. Positive behaviour, if you practice it consistently, will change the way you think and feel. And it will over-ride that negative voice in your head that is determined to hold you back.

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Don’t be surprised when you change

Something happens when we set scary goals. In the process of getting to that point, we become different people. The change doesn’t happen instantly, but when you look back to it after some time, you’ll notice that something changed.

This is completely normal. And, one major way of changing who you are is by setting big goals. Because for you to achieve certain things, you’ll be remolded in the process.

It’s the process of getting to your goals that actually makes you achieve those things.

In that process, you keep getting molded and remolded until you become a different person that most people won’t recognize.

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Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind

Your subconscious mind has a great deal of power in controlling your life experiences — from the kind of choices you make to the actions you take each day, and even how you react to stressful situations.

Every bit of it is guided by your subconscious beliefs and interpretations.

In short, your subconscious mind is like the auto-pilot feature on an airplane. It has been pre-programmed to follow a specific route and you can’t deviate from that route unless you change the directions programmed into it first.

If you want to change the direction, you got to learn how to reprogram your subconscious mind.

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Power of habit

Why do we do develop habits? And how can we change them? Why can some people change overnight, and some stay stuck in their old ruts?

We can always change. If you do just about anything frequently enough over time, you will form a habit that will control you.

And its more powerful than you can imagine.

Habit is probably the most powerful tool in your brain’s toolbox. It is driven by a golf-ball-sized lump of tissue called the basal ganglia at the base of the cerebrum. It is so deep-seated and instinctual that we are not conscious of it, though it controls our actions.

Good habits are those that get you to do what your “upper-level you” wants, and bad habits are those that are controlled by your “lower-level you” and stand in the way of your getting what your “upper-level you” wants.

– Dalio, Ray. Principles: Life and Work

Research suggests that if you stick with a behavior for approximately eighteen months, you will build a strong tendency to stick to it nearly forever.

Habits aren’t destiny. They’re science, one which can transform our our lives.

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Newton’s third law applied to life

For every action (such as easy money and credit) there is a consequence (in this case, higher inflation) roughly proportionate to that action, which causes an approximately equal and opposite reaction

– Dalio, Ray. Principles: Life and Work

Newton’s third law applies to how we create meaningful change in our lives. With each action we take, there is an invisible force providing resistance in the opposite direction.

The greater the reaction, the harder it is to reliably sustain. Meaningful change almost never happens quickly and we need to learn to be okay with that.

A way to use this law effectively is to start slow and maintain consistency.

The 12 steps of transformation

Transformation involves deeper changes that confront habits and thinking patterns of long time and as any changes there are hard, but not impossible. Fortunately there are some models of transformation processes that have proven to have worked in some specific contexts.

Alcoholic Anonymous (AA’) 12-Step approach follows a set of guidelines designed as “steps” toward recovery, and members can revisit these steps at any time.

The following “The 12 Steps of transformation are adopted from AA’s 12 steps approach.

1. We admit we are powerless over in-action – that our lives have become unmanageable.
2. Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (mind you, this is not about the religion).
4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Get entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him.
12. Have a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we try to carry this message to others who are struggling to transform.